This invention relates to refrigeration air conditioners and to dehumidifiers.
Conventional home air conditioners regardless of their type, generally have a constantly blowing room air fan, circulating air from the room, through the evaporator coil, and back into the room. The temperature of the room being controlled by turning the compressor on and off, to occasionally cool the evaporator coil below the room air temperature, sufficiently and frequently enough to cool the room air to the desired temperature.
Due to their design, however, it can be seen that such air conditioners are totally incapable of dehumidifying inside room air unless they are in the cooling portion of the cycle, and incapable of dehumidifying any outside fresh air they bring in unless they are in the cooling portion of the cycle. Conventional home air conditioners are therefore especially useless on a day when the outside temperature is say 67.degree.F and it is raining with a 100% relative humidity at that 67.degree.F. The air conditioner cannot dehumidify the room air or ventilate the dwelling with dehumidified air because it is not in a cooling cycle, so the dwelling becomes humid, and uncomfortable for occupancy even though the dwelling is not actually too warm.
Large complicated and expensive systems have been designed to adequately cool, ventilate, and dehumidify, but their cost is prohibitive to most homeowners.
It is one object of this invention to provide a simple and inexpensive fresh air ventilating system for a dwelling to be used in both the cold wintertime and in the hot humid summertime where excessive relative humidity of that fresh air can be optionally reduced without cooling the dwelling.
It is another object of this invention to provide a cooling system which can cool an otherwise hot and humid dwelling and which also has means to optionally choose the relative humidity that such cooling will provide.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a simple and economical system to manufacture which can jointly or independently, to the degree desired, ventilate and/or dehumidify and/or cool a dwelling.
It is a salient object of this invention to provide a device which without cooling the dwelling more than desired, can make a dwelling comfortable to occupy, by reducing the relative humidity of the dwelling to a sufficiently low level as to permit being comforatable in the dwelling when it has a higher temperature than would otherwise be desirable thus providing a healthier environment while serving electricity.